Speeches / page 11

Mabel Ping-Hua Lee
Speeches
China’s Submerged Half/The Submerged Half - Jan. 29, 1915
January 29, 1915
Lee gave this speech at a Women’s Political Union suffrage shop at 663 Fifth Avenue, New York City. She gave this speech on at least one other occasion. I plead for a wider sphere of usefulness for the long submerged women of China. I ask for our girls the open door to the treasury of knowledge, the same opportunities for physical development as boys and the same rights of participation in all human activities of which they are individually capable. By the beginning of the 20th century the conditions of […]
Mabel Ping-Hua Lee
Speeches
Chinese Patriotism – 1914
September 1, 1914
Lee gave this winning oration at a conference for Chinese students in the United States, held in Amherst, Massachusetts, from August 28-September 4, 1914. The exact date of her speech is unknown. Few Westerners give the Chinese much credit for patriotism. On the contrary, many have striven to prove that they are devoid of it. You will recall that while peace negotiations were pending after the first revolutionary outbreaks, press despatches [sic] described the opposing parties as “ropes of sand,” implying that there were lacking common interests and love of […]
Rose Schneiderman
Speeches
We Have Found You Wanting – April 2, 1911
April 2, 1911
Schneiderman spoke at a memorial meeting held in the Metropolitan Opera House for the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire . This was her address, as reported in the New York Times the next day. I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public and we have found you wanting. The old Inquisition had its rack and its thumbscrews and its instruments of torture with iron teeth. We know what these things […]
Charlotte Hawkins Brown
Speeches
The Negro and the Social Graces – March 10, 1940
March 10, 1940
Speech given during the March 10, 1940 CBS radio broadcast of “Wings Over Jordan.” I have chosen to speak to you this morning on a subject which is very near to my soul, “The Negro and the Social Graces.” By social graces I do not mean an attitude of cheap servility, assumed for the purpose of currying favor. I mean simply doing the courteous thing and making a pleasing appearance—the practice of everyday good manners so generally lacking nowadays in the conduct of the average young person, regardless of race. […]
Maria Pearson
Speeches
Oral History Interview at the Farm Shed Restaurant – Oct. 1999
October 1, 1999
When that story broke and they asked me what my age was and I told them... no one ever realizes the depth or the width or the length of the knowledge [becomes important] when you're living it until somebody asks you to tell the story of what happened and it was through that process...my children want to know the details in the beginning, the first ten years of that creation for me because I wasn't permitted to speak about it. That came not from me but the other world, the […]
Maria Pearson
Speeches
Oral History Interview at the Iowa Farm Shed Restaurant - Jan. 15, 2000
January 15, 2000
When the white man first came to this world, it was a new world. The new was new to them because historically they had a history of destroying. They came to the new world and here they found an abundance of everything but they still had these millions of people living over there and they were being sustained by this land. Pure air, pure water. You could drink out of any stream on this continent. There was no pollution. I remember the days when we drank water out of the […]
Maria Pearson
Speeches
Comments on the way to the University of Nebraska Bison Conference - April 6, 2000
April 6, 2020
Following is a transcription of a conversation in a University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) van driving Omaha teacher education students from Macy to Lincoln to the Nebraska Bison Conference. Fred McManahan [Frank McManamon], he campaigned hard to get that job being head of Native American Graves Protection and Reparation Act (NAGPRA). It's like having the fox guarding the chicken coop you know. Cause he's an Arch [archeologist]. I'm always fight the bureaucrats. I've been the advisor now to four governors in Iowa. I refused to let them pay me and I […]
Maria Pearson
Speeches
Remarks in the “Bones of Contention” Documentary - Jan. 23, 1995
January 23, 1995
The following is from a transcription of the 1995 BBC documentary “Bones of Contention” about the archaeology of Indigenous peoples that featured Pearson’s work. Full transcription Maria Pearson: This is where it all began, back in 1971. My husband, John Pearson, was construction engineer in charge of rebuilding Highway 34, and it was when they found a cemetery. It was part of a village at the turn of the century. My husband came in from work and he says, 'Honey, you're going to be really upset when I tell you […]
Sojourner Truth
Speeches
Then I Began to Live – Jan. 1, 1871
January 1, 1871
Well, children, I’m glad to see so many together. If I am eighty-three years old, I only count my age from the time that I was emancipated. Then I began to live. God is a-fulfilling, and my lost time that I lost being a slave was made up. When I was a slave I hated the white people. My mother said to me when I was to be sold from her, “I want to tell you these things that you will always know that I have told you, for there […]
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Speeches
A Mighty Advancement – May 11, 1858
May 11, 1858
I have heard it related of Napoleon Bonaparte that during the latter part of his life, he had a dream, in which before him rose an army worn to skin and bones, and they raised their bloodless hands and pointed at him, and said, “You are the cause!” There is an army in our land, an army which has been gathering for long and weary years. If it was an army whose bloodless lips and pallid cheeks a tale of want and suffering told, I could have held my peace. […]